NYC96LA176 · Temco D-16A
Temco D-16A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA176
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Temco D-16A
- Aircraft type
- Temco D-16
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N128N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Hainesport, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The the multi-engine airplane was observed by witnesses flying over a New Jersey airport in a northerly direction. Later, a witness north of the airport observed it flying in a southerly direction, with the landing gear extended. This witness heard the engines 'cutting in and out.' Subsequently, the airplane collided with terrain in an open field, about 3/4 of a mile north of the airport. Both engine propellers were found feathered; no fuel was found in the airplane's fuel tanks. The student pilot/owner was based in Arkansas. He had purchased the airplane at an airport in Arkansas during July 1996. The student first received dual flight instruction in 1960, and soloed during December 1993. After a 6 hour dual cross-country flight in February 1994, the student was approved for solo cross-country flights to two airports. That was the last dual instruction that he received. Between February 1994 and February 1996, the student logged over 230 hours of solo flight time, of which over 95 hours were solo cross-country to numerous airports, several over 800 miles from his base airport. The student had no record of multi-engine flight instruction, and he had not logged any multi-engine flight time.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper inflight planning/decision and inadequate management of fuel, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA176
- Event ID
- 20001208X06609
- Case number
- NYC96LA176
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 023916dc1172285c99e7021687e5d3021feb06e2f5f797a5a5fab35ae1ae5f1e; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:30:27.635Z.